King Richard
"King Richard" is half sports movie, half biopic. As such, it hits the sweet spots and sour notes of both genres. Depending on your perspective, this is either an invitation or a warning. Fans of the preternaturally talented tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams will flock to this origin story when it makes its simultaneous debut in theaters and on HBO Max. But the film's title, and the Williams' executive producer credits, should clue you in on exactly how complicated the characterization of its subject will be, and just how far the needle will be sent up the likability gauge. It seems that only directors Bob Fosse and Richard Pryor were willing to risk making their semi-autobiographical, cinematic alter egos potentially irredeemable at the expense of viewers' comfort. Richard Williams does some infuriating things here, but the movie never once indicates he was ever wrong. This sands the edges off a film that occasionally comes at you from unexpectedly askew angles.
When Mario van Peebles decided to play his father, Melvin, in "Baadasssss," the elder van Peebles told him "don't make me too nice." Will Smith adheres to this philosophy, though "King Richard" keeps pulling him back from the brink. The day before my screening, I saw Smith live on his book tour at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn. He read from his book, performed songs and chatted with Spike Lee . Smith talked about how he uses humor as a defense mechanism, an action to hide his fears. His words came back to me as I watched his performance; Richard Williams is always on, tossing off asides and comments that are often hilarious and mean enough for a Madea movie. He is larger than life, and we need a larger-than-life personality to play him, someone who can successfully overpower your defenses with charm.
Though Smith's characterization is oversized, his best moments occur when he's cornered into dropping his façade. He's playing a man who refuses to acknowledge anything besides his own opinion, yet he is hauntingly effective when forced into silence. Despite two Oscar nominations, Smith is rarely given credit for his dramatic acting chops. The scenes where he shows Williams' vulnerability have a wounded quality that lingers long after the moment has passed. Whether surveying his wounds after his umpteenth violent run-in with neighborhood riff-raff ("Daddy got beat up again!" one of his kids announces), or realizing there's no way he can help his daughter get out of her own head on the court, Smith excels at showing the wounded man under all the bravado. It's the screenplay by Zach Baylin that keeps threatening to undermine his performance. There's a dramatic skittishness here that can't be ignored. The actor is willing to be truly unlikable in appropriate moments, but the film keeps making him unimpeachable.
If you know this story, you know that Richard Williams, Compton resident and big idea man, drafted a "plan" for his daughters Venus and Serena before they were born. The plan indicated that the duo would become enormous tennis superstars. There will be no deviations, so Williams puts the elder Venus ( Saniyya Sidney ) and her younger sibling/best friend Serena ( Demi Singleton ) through their practices even when it's pouring rain outside. "I got two Michael Jordans," he says, and it's fun to watch him rub a former detractor's face in Venus' success once she starts winning. You'd probably agree with these early naysayers if a man presented you with a brochure for his kids' future and demanded you accepted it without question. But this movie is guilty of that same sin. We don't even hear what the entire plan is, and if you didn't know any better, you'd think Venus and Serena were the first two Black women to play the game. No mention of the legacy of Althea Gibson can be found. I wondered if her career had any bearing on Richard's decision to consider tennis.
Since Richard can't reproduce by osmosis, "King Richard" reminds us the Williams sisters had a mother, Brandy, played by the always welcome Aunjanue Ellis . Ellis is somewhat trapped in the "supportive spouse who puts up with a bunch of crap yet has her own dreams" role, but she has two knockout scenes that reinforce why she's one of my favorite currently working actors. The larger, and more impressive of the two, occurs when she finally has had enough of her husband's self-martyrdom. Brandy reads her husband for filth, and the electricity between the fiery Ellis and the backpedaling yet still prideful Smith makes for one of the year's best scenes. It's a smaller version of Viola Davis ' masterful scene opposite Denzel Washington in " Fences "—Brandy and Rose are saying the same thing, combatting and besting the same type of foe—but it's equally memorable.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green is much better at directing the dramatic scenes than he is at the tennis sequences. They have a flat, repetitive quality that doesn't reflect just how exciting they were in real life. Since this has to end, as all sports movies do, with the big game, this could have been a major deficit. But "King Richard" is smart enough to know its strength is in its acting, so it wisely cuts between the play action and Richard and Brandy's reactions and monologues. Green is also far better at conveying the intensity of the threats in Compton (a scene of shocking violence is superbly handled by the director and Smith) than he is at depicting the inherent racism prevalent at the lily-White clubs where Venus and Serena compete. They seem too gentle and jokey, though Jon Bernthal gives a good, frustration-filled turn as coach Rick Macci.
Much will be made of Smith's performance, which is excellent, and I'm hoping Ellis gets all the praise she deserves. But Sidney and Singleton should also be commended for their excellent work as Venus and Serena. Both have difficult roles to play, that of the rising star and the budding one temporarily trapped in her shadow, respectively. Plus, unlike Will Smith, they have to mimic two of the greatest athletes to ever play any sport. They should be kept in the conversation, because it's the acting across the board that ultimately saves "King Richard." It earns the extra half-star that makes this a "thumbs up" review. At 140 minutes, the film is about half an hour too long, but everyone onscreen made the extra time far more tolerable than it could have been.
"King Richard" will be available in theaters and on HBO Max on November 19th.
Odie Henderson
Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .
- Will Smith as Richard Williams
- Demi Singleton as Serena Williams
- Saniyya Sidney as Venus Williams
- Aunjanue Ellis as Oracene 'Brandi' Williams
- Jon Bernthal as Rick Macci
- Tony Goldwyn as Paul Cohen
- Susie Abromeit as Robin Finn
- Kris Bowers
- Pamela Martin
- Reinaldo Marcus Green
Cinematographer
- Robert Elswit
- Zach Baylin
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'King Richard' review: Will Smith gives the performance of his life
The movie focuses on the rise of Venus, leaving Serena in the shadows.
Former Fresh Prince Will Smith gives the performance of his life in “King Richard,” in theaters and on HBO Max. Destined for awards glory, Smith sends the story of Richard Williams — the hard-driving father/coach of tennis champs Venus and Serena Williams — to the winner’s circle.
From the first sight of Richard wrangling his girls to Beyoncé power-ballading “Be Alive” over the end credits (“Couldn’t wipe this black off if I tried/That’s why I lift my head with pride”), “King Richard” easily reigns as the feel-good movie of the year. And if it sandpapers off Richard’s rougher edges, that’s what happens when a biopic comes with family approval.
Luckily, screenwriter Zach Baylin dodges the worst underdog clichés. And indie director Reinaldo Marcus Green (“Monsters and Men” “Joe Bell”) deserves high praise for keeping it real by deepening the uplift with human complications and bringing out the best in a dynamite cast.
“King Richard” is Smith’s show — Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) are still teens dreaming of Wimbledon when the film wraps — but Aunjanue Ellis as Brandy, Richard’s wife and the mother of five daughters, is an unshakeable source of love and balance in a magnificent portrayal that deserves a shower of raves.
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Since we already know that Venus and Serena will hit it big, “King Richard” tells us what we don’t know, which is how they got there, taking life lessons from an overbearing father whose persecution by the KKK in his native Louisiana magnified his determination to call the shots, even if it means breaking wind at bigots who don’t think his Black life matters.
Set in South Central Los Angeles in the 1990s era of Rodney King and drive-by shootings, the film spins around Richard’s 78-page manifesto to make Grand Slammers out of Venus and Serena, his only biological children with Brandy. But first Richard needs to get his family out of Compton with its ragged public tennis courts and into the restrictively white game of tennis.
At one point, Richard grabs a gun he uses as a security guard to retaliate against local thugs who beat him and come on to his daughters. But he’s held back by the need to create role models for a new generation of Black girls he calls “ghetto Cinderellas.”
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Though Smith adds pounds and a grizzled beard to play Richard, his ingratiating humor still shines through as he pressures two famous coaches — Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn) and Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal) — to train his girls. It’s hard not to laugh watching him do the hustle.
Sure his methods are unorthodox when he pulls Venus off the junior circuit, where stars are made, to enjoy school before she turns pro. This infuriates the tennis establishment and Venus who is eager to compete. “I have the game,” she tells a TV reporter, “now I need to play it.”
The movie focuses on the rise of Venus, leaving Serena in the shadows to await her own legendary turn. Sidney and Singleton play these roles with a disarming naturalness that shows they learned as much from their fiercely private mother as their spotlight-hogging father.
Did Richard push against the barriers of race, class and poverty for his girls or for himself? Though the movie lists Richard’s faults it rarely dramatizes them. But there’s no faulting the Smith tour de force. Having been nominated for “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness” (he was robbed for “Concussion”), the third time looks like the charm to make Smith Oscar royalty.
MORE: Review: 'Judas and the Black Messiah' is a new movie classic
The tennis action is thrilling, but the drama cuts deepest in the family scenes that show the sweetness and the steel required to grow up a Williams. “King Richard” is a crowd-pleaser in the best sense of the word. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll tell your friends, and you just might want to stand up and cheer.
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Will Smith’s Performance Makes King Richard Worth Seeing
Some will look at King Richard and wonder why anyone would want to make a movie about Richard Williams, father to tennis gods Venus and Serena, when his superstar daughters’ stories are right there and more momentous. But oblique approaches to well-known tales can have their own value, and it makes some sense here — as the film is less about the father and more about a fraught but loving family relationship at a pivotal time in all their lives. Richard was born and raised in the segregated South, and his journey was a dramatic one. “Where I grew up, Louisiana, Cedar Grove, tennis was not a game peoples played,” he tells us in the film’s opening narration. “We was too busy running from the Klan.” We don’t actually see his past — the film isn’t really a biopic — but we feel it, in the hunched posture, gravelly determination, and oddly deferential hard-headedness with which Will Smith plays him. It’s as if he’s absorbed a lifetime of hurt and hate so that his kids wouldn’t have to.
When we first meet Richard, he’s already well aware that Venus and Serena (Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton) are enormous talents. Indeed, it’s all part of his so-called plan, an elaborate, preordained trajectory of how Venus and Serena’s lives and careers will develop. “When I’m interested in a thing, I learn it,” Richard tells us. “How it works, how the best peoples in the world do it. And that’s what I did with tennis, with the girls.” That goes beyond just teaching them skills, however; it also involves breaking into the circuit of big-time trainers and clubs, a world in which a Black family from Compton is a rather rare sight. Wandering into the middle of a practice match between Pete Sampras and John McEnroe, overseen by legendary coach Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), Richard insists that the bewildered Cohen watch his daughters play. Sure enough, within a few minutes, Cohen has taken on Venus as a student for free. (He can’t teach both kids, however, so Serena — who would, perhaps ironically, go on to become an even bigger tennis champion — has to stay home and continue lessons with her mom, Oracene, played by Aunjanue Ellis.)
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, King Richard bounces along briskly through its somewhat predictable plot points. Cohen tells Richard that to get noticed, Venus needs to participate in junior tournaments. Soon, she’s destroying any and all opponents, leaving her young rivals and their parents angry, humiliated, and questioning their decision to play this sport in the first place. Richard loves to talk about his aforementioned plan as an iron-clad thing, but there seems to be more improvisation and backpedaling than he lets on. Despite Venus’s astounding success in juniors, Richard becomes convinced that the relentless grind of the circuit will psychologically ruin his daughter. So he changes coaches — to Florida-based Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal, doing a perfect impression of just about every other adult I met in the 1980s), whom he hopes will train Venus without the immediate promise of competitive glory.
Of course, Richard’s decisions about doing what’s best for his daughters never actually seem to involve his daughters, or Oracene, despite the fact that she appears to have been just as instrumental in helping the girls develop their skills. That’s not the only fundamental, or obvious, inconsistency in his approach. He wants the girls to enjoy their childhoods, and to not become victims to expectations and pressure — and yet he’s harder on them than just about anyone else. We find a perfect example of this in a scene when Richard makes the whole family sit down and watch a VHS of Disney’s Cinderella ; when he feels that the kids haven’t gleaned the right lessons from the movie, he makes them watch it again. The film wants us to feel love for this man, sure — but maybe a little terror, too. (Venus and Serena are producers of the film. Richard himself was reportedly uninvolved, and even reluctant.) We understand that, for all his wisdom and his dedication to the girls, there’s a slightly tyrannical streak to this man, a refusal to entertain opposing views. He wants his daughters to be kids, but he himself, it seems, has forgotten to be a grown-up.
There’s pathos here, too. And that’s where having Will Smith pays the most dividends. Because he is also such a huge movie star, we often overlook the actor’s transformative capabilities — as evidenced in previous films like the sublime Ali and the not-so-sublime Concussion . His performance here is not a full-on impersonation, as far as I can tell. Instead, he seems to have brought his own poetic physicality to the part. He plays Richard as a rough, gruff man, his bearing nearly collapsing under all the responsibilities he’s put on himself. It’s a touching turn, but not a particularly surprising one, thanks to a pro forma script that telegraphs all its big moments and rarely tries for the unexpected, keeping all its key emotional beats to the level of incident and dialogue — which feels like a bit of a waste when you have as dynamic and versatile a presence as Smith.
Still, when King Richard works, it sings. During one teary, late-night confessional, Richard tells Venus of a time when, as a child in Shreveport, he was beaten in front of his father by a group of white men for accidentally touching one of them. He recalls that his dad just ran away from the scene, ashamed and unwilling to help. So Richard has made a promise to himself. “I never want you to look up, and see your dad running away,” he tells Venus as he chokes back tears. When the girls are competing, however, we do see him turn away, keeping his head down or off to the side — as if, for all his outward confidence, he can’t bear to watch what happens. During a climactic match between Venus and Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, he’s out by the locker rooms, wandering the corridors, watching on TV, anywhere but in the stands. Earlier, we’d seen him bemusedly watching the aggressive parents of Venus’s (usually white) rivals petulantly yanking their kids away after their losses, as they loudly complained and dismissed their second- and third-place trophies. Richard may not be one of those outwardly hypercompetitive adults, but he’s not entirely free of his own fears and weaknesses either; he’s merely internalized it all. So that when he does take his seat in the stands — as he must — we understand that his daughters’ accomplishments will liberate and lift him as well.
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